


Shake the Dust Off Your Wings

by dark_roast



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-16
Updated: 2010-05-16
Packaged: 2017-10-10 05:32:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/96124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dark_roast/pseuds/dark_roast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><b>SPOILERS through the Season Five finale!</b></p><p>In the wake of Lucifer's rampage across the earth, Dean must step up, accept his destiny, and try to save his brother... if there's anything left of Sam to save.</p><p>Written as a pinch-hit for Apocalyptothon 2010.  My original request, from InkAndChocolate, was: <i>"Who doesn't love a knock down, drag out, duel to the death cage match between angels and demons? Well, aside from humanity, I mean. The boys are left in the smoking rubble (literally or not, up to you) and trying to figure out what comes next and who's left."</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	Shake the Dust Off Your Wings

Six oh-three a.m. Fifty-seven minutes before the alarm went off. As he squinted at the digital clock on the nightstand, the three became a four. Then Dean realized what had woken him. It was Lisa, running her fingertips over his bare back. Up and down his spine, then in slow circles.

Dean smiled sleepily. "Can't get enough of me, huh?" he said, as he rolled over.

"Good morning, love," said Crowley.

Dean jumped out of the bed. Or, tried to. He was out of practice. Five years ago, he would've furled the covers back and sprung up, snatching the gun from beneath his pillow. But, he'd gone soft. He tumbled out of bed and hit the carpet in a snarl of sheets and blankets.

Crowley vanished from the bed and appeared again, standing over Dean. He didn't offer a hand up. Not like Dean would've taken it. All he did was roll his eyes.

Dean kicked off the bed covers, and scrambled to his feet. He was only wearing boxers. He had no weapons, no rock salt. Nothing. "What the fuck are you doing here? What have you done with Lisa and Ben?"

"Do you mean the real Lisa and Ben, or the Lisa and Ben inside your head? Never mind." Crowley straightened his tie. "Either way, the answer's the same. I don't know, and I don't care."

Dean frowned.

"Yes, that's right," Crowley said. "You're not quite as stupid as I remember. Good."

Dean had slept in the same bed for more than a year. The same big, comfortable bed with sheets that smelled of the same detergent; in the same house, that made the same settling creaks and sighs, every night. The normal, apple-pie life he had promised Sam, he'd imagined all of it.

"I'm dead," he said. "Lucifer killed me."

"He tried. You're just enough alive, that you're absolutely no use to us."

"Who's 'us'? I thought Lucifer had you on the run."

"Oh, he does," Crowley replied. "All of us, demons and humans alike. Those of us he hasn't killed yet. I meant your friends. Bobby and… " Crowley's lip curled with a combination of amusement and disgust. "…the other one."

"Bobby and Cas are dead."

A spark of malice lit Crowley's dark eyes. "Peaches, you never made it out of Detroit. Everything else was fabrication. Your capacity for self-deception is amazing, Dean. Truly. Alastair told me you were the most fun he'd had in centuries, but I didn't believe him until now."

Dean lifted his hands on the sides of his head, wishing he could squeeze hard enough to force these two versions of reality into a coherent whole.

"The green Army man in the ashtray…" Crowley pressed one hand to his heart. "I was moved, Dean. To nausea."

"Yeah, well you've got no soul."

"On the contrary. I've got seven million. Give or take."

Sam _had_ jammed a green Army man in the ashtray of the Impala. It was still there. That memory was true. It hit Dean with stinging clarity. The last time he'd seen Lisa Braedon, he'd been standing on her porch, trying to tell her the end of the world was coming.

Dean said, "So, how do I know you're not a figment of my imagination?"

Crowley arched his eyebrows and smirked. "You're saying it's plausible you'd imagine waking up next to me in bed?"

"You wish," Dean said. "What do you want?"

"Nothing much. Just to bring you up to speed. While you've been shagging your girlfriend and playing catch with Mini Me, the Apocalypse came and went. The world burned. Storms swept it away, earthquakes shook it to pieces. The dragon rose from the pit. The angels gambled on Adam, and they lost. Michael's dead. It's over."

The glint of mischief was gone from the demon's eyes, and Dean felt chilled, standing on the Ikea throw rug in his underwear. He folded his arms over his chest. "Why tell me, if it's too late?"

"Because you made a promise."

Dean glanced around the darkened bedroom.

"Not to Sam, you cretin. To Death. You promised to put your brother back in his hole. He killed you in Detroit, and Death declined to take you."

"But, Michael's dead. I don't matter anymore."

"Yes," said Crowley. "Michael is very, very dead." The demon smiled again, showing his teeth this time. "Luckily, someone had the stones to step up and make a deal."

"Who did you...?" A cold fist squeezed Dean's heart. There was only one possibility. "No. No way. Cas would never wish for that."

"Why? Because he'd follow you to the end of the earth? Well, here we are. The End. He gambled on you. And he lost."

"You'll give it back, right? You told Cas you'd give back his soul."

"He didn't ask."

Dean drew in a slow breath.

"This isn't some piddly, everyday deal, like the one you made for Sam. We're talking about bringing a bloody archangel back from the dead. This is a very special deal, his is a very special soul, and the taste of his despair is…" Crowley's tongue flicked out and touched the corner of his lip. "Oh, it's tasty, all right."

"How many years did you give him?"

"None." Crowley pinned Dean with a glare, his eyes gleaming black between one blink and the next. "He's the one who stole you from me in the first place."

"Crowley --" Dean's voice came out a whisper. "Not Cas. He's lost everything because of me."

"You're begging me for compassion? Me?"

"Yes," Dean said. "Please."

Crowley examined his cuticles. "Say yes to Michael. Put that monster back in prison -- or kill him -- I don't give a toss. Then I'll consider it." He glanced up. "I'll tell you what, Dean. Do your fucking job, instead of bitching about how you're such a special snowflake, that the fate of the entire world runs a distant second to your free will. Do the job you were born to do, and I promise I'll give back Castiel's soul, and Bobby's. I'll even sweeten the deal. Get rid of Lucifer, and we'll never cross paths again."

"Nice offer," Dean murmured. "From a demon."

Crowley drew back his shoulders. He looked offended. Genuinely offended. "I'm the King of the Crossroads, you whiny pillock. I always keep my promises."

The clock on the nightstand clicked, and the radio came on in the middle of an Angus Young guitar lick, then Brian Johnson sang in his raspy growl, _"I'm a rolling thunder, a pouring rain. I'm comin' on like a hurricane. My lightning's flashing across the sky. You're only young, but you're gonna die."_

"Fine," Dean said. "We've got a deal."

"Marvelous," Crowley purred.

Dean was well aware that every deal with Crowley was sealed with a kiss, regardless of the terms. "Brace yourself," he said. "Your world is about to be rocked."

***

Dean's first indrawn breath tickled his mouth and his throat. His vision was blurry. He was covered with… something. It felt like hair, or thread. He wiped it away with his fingers. Cobwebs and dust. How long had it been, here, in the real world? He didn't want to know.

The overhead fluorescent panels were dark. No squeak of nurse's shoes, no rattle of wheels, no voices, no sounds of equipment. Nothing. Dean tugged the cracked plastic tubes out of his nose and his mouth, the IV needle from his arm. Dull, reddish light light spilled through the slits in the blinds.

He swung his legs over the edge of the bed and stood, holding onto the metal rail, waiting for the wave of weakness. It didn't come. Barefoot, he padded to the window, and raised the blind. The sky was red, scabbed over by dark clouds. He looked out over a landscape of silent devastation: blasted buildings, twisted wrecks of cars, and zephyrs of blowing trash. The city formerly known as Detroit.

"Fuck. Oh, fucking hell."

Crowley was right. And Cas was right. Damn them both, and damn himself, along with them. He'd been sick and tired of fighting for so long. He didn't even know why he was fighting anymore. But, when it came right down to it, Michael's family business was the same as Dean's. Saving people, hunting things.

"Yes," Dean said.

***

He should have taken some Dramamine.

Add that to the list of Should-Haves. Should have stopped Sam. Should have gone to therapy and conquered his fear of flying, before sprouting a pair of wings. Should have tried harder, aimed truer, fought longer, planned better, been smarter. Should have not been born Dean Winchester, basically.

Fuck it. Too late now.

Saying yes didn't go the way he'd thought. Maybe it was the fact that a demon had brought Michael back from the dead. Maybe this was how it was meant to be all along. Maybe it had never occurred to either one of them because it was too obvious. Two beings created with the specific purpose of fitting together -- will fit together. Dean wasn't a hand puppet, an angel condom, a prisoner in his own body. Instead, he found his missing half. Sword and sheath. Archangel and destined vessel.

But, he couldn't get used to the wings.

It took him seven months to find Sam. The Enochian spells Cas had carved on both their rib cages, hid both of them. At first, Dean figured he could just follow the trail of destruction, but there was no place anywhere left untouched by Lucifer's fury. Crowley had not exaggerated. There wasn't much difference between upstairs and downstairs anymore. The world was a wasteland, and Sam was a monster. Literally.

If Dean had still been human, he wouldn't have known his brother. Would never have recognized the gigantic, seven-headed red dragon as anything other than a beast. _The_ Beast, to be precise. As if the rage inside of his brother had swallowed him, pulled him inside out like a glove, and now it burned wild, destroying everything it found.

_My brother. _ He wasn't sure whether the thought came from Michael, or himself. It didn't matter anymore. _My little brother._

"Hey!" he said. "King Ghidorah!"

The dragon roared, spewing fire from three of its heads. Thunder cracked the sky. All fourteen of its golden eyes blazed, maddened past reason. It launched itself into the air after Dean. Each sweep of its vast wings blasted volcanic wind at Dean, rolling a gust of ash and debris down the street.

Dean had been eight years old the last time he'd picked up a car and chucked it at his brother. Just like last time, Sam swatted the car out of the air. This time, the car didn't have Mattel printed on the undercarriage. This time, Sam wasn't a toddler. The dark gray Miata spun through the air toward Dean, who leaped away. The car exploded against the side of a building, blasting fragments of glass and metal.

Dean's own wings lofted him skyward. Sometimes they were gray feathers, sometimes they were a thousand meshing blades, and sometimes they weren't there at all. The archangel part of his brain knew how to work them. The Dean part was still learning. He plunged a few meters, and caught himself, before he crashed into the buildings on the other side of the street.

"Sam," he said. "If you're in there -- if any part of you is still there --"

The Beast lashed its tail, the spiked tip smashing into the roof of a building. Lightning split the sky, followed by another roll of thunder. Dean drew his sword and plunged between snapping fangs, losing a few feathers. Another head knocked him aside as it tried to bite him. Dean tumbled through the air, feeling Michael's frustration echo his own. His wings opened, catching him. There. Right there, in blade's reach, burning through the dragon's scaly skin, he saw the black star of its heart. He tucked his wings and dove. He didn't know which of them moved his hand, or if they both agreed, but his sword plunged into the dragon's flank, instead of its heart.

If he could only go back to the beginning, back to before Lilith, before Azazel, before everything went wrong -- he only had an instant. He grabbed Sam, or Lucifer, or the dragon -- took hold of the tangle of shapes that was his brother, and with its shriek of pain and fury still shaking the air, Dean willed himself _AWAY._

There was an explosion of white light, and Michael's startled protest, and Baltimore vanished underneath them, windows blowing out, buildings crumbling, a chorus of car alarms wailing. A noise like a thousand voices shouting filled Dean's ears, but it was wind. Freezing, buffeting wind.

It wasn't the flying part of flying that terrified Dean. It was the falling part.

And he _was_ falling, tightly entangled in the dragon's coils and wings and claws. The dragon was either dead or stunned, or one hundred percent committed to giving Dean the body slam to end all body slams. Michael was a swirl of confusion and incandescent anger, and no help to Dean whatsoever. Dean couldn't even scream. There was no breath left in his lungs.

The earth rushed to meet him, wide golden-white. Rumpled gray mountains, straggling blue threads of two rivers, meeting in a patch of green. This was going to be bad. It was going to hurt. A lot.

He was right. He could see exactly where he was going, and yet impact was a wrenching shock anyway. It arrived much sooner than Dean expected, flattening him, scattering him, blinding even his angel sight. Then his eyes filled with sky. Gorgeous, infinite sky, a deeper, more brilliant blue than he'd ever seen.

His injuries were -- well, never mind even taking stock of those. He was dead for sure, but his body seemed to be working fine anyway. He turned his head. Sam lay about twenty feet away from him. Sam.

"Sam!"

Dean scrambled up, and fell down again, his fingers sinking into warm black ash. He wasn't in pain, but his body felt peculiar. Disjointed. Sloshy. He climbed to his feet, staggered, righted himself. He and his brother had landed in the middle of a large crater. Or, possibly, they'd made the crater. He looked back at the spot where he'd landed, where his wings had burned their silhouette into the ground.

He walked to where Sam lay, in the center of another blast mark. Blood had burst out of Sam's nose and mouth, and he was covered in ash. Dean knelt, ignoring the way that made his insides feel even more squashy and grindy. He could fix that, he sensed, with a little angel mojo. Except he had none left. He'd burned himself dry, zapping them... wherever this was.

He put his hand on his brother's shoulder. "Sam." A second voice inside him called to his brother with another name.

Sam's eyes fluttered open, and fixed on Dean's.

"Sorry about that," Dean said gently. "Had trouble steering."

Sam covered his face with both hands and began to cry.

"Oh --" Dean ran his hands through his hair. "Oh, Sam. Sammy. Don't do that. It's okay."

Which was an utterly stupid thing to say to somebody who'd trashed the entire earth like a cheap motel room, but what the fuck was he supposed to say? Sam's harsh, broken sobs tore his heart. He couldn't even put his arms around his brother, who lay curled on his side in the charred dirt.

"I'm sorry," Sam said. "I'm so sorry. I killed you, and I was so angry. I'm sorry. I just -- I-I gave up."

"I gave up, too." Dean laid his hand on Sam's back. "Don't sweat it. We're only human."

Sam uttered a huff that Dean recognized as a laugh.

"Even though you make a badass dragon," he added.

"I tried to hold onto you," Sam said. "When we fell, I tried to protect you."

"You know you've got wings, right?"

Sam said nothing. He continued to say nothing, for a long time. Dean sat with him, not speaking either. Just sitting.

Then Sam climbed to his feet. Dean lifted his head, watching his brother brush the ash and grit off his tee shirt and his jeans. Sam straightened and spread his wings: sweep of storm cloud and shadow rising between Dean and the blue sky, before he folded them once more.

"You just going to sit there?" he said.

"Maybe."

"Where are we, anyhow?"

Dean shrugged, embarrassed. "I don't know. I just wanted to take you somewhere else. I didn't have time to think it out."

"It's nice," Sam said, giving him a crooked smile. "It's quiet."

He walked away from Dean, and climbed to the lip of the crater. The dirt crumbled under his boots, but the slope was gentle. When he reached the summit, he stopped, and looked out over the edge. Then he looked back.

"You honestly don't know where we are?"

Dean stood up. Already, he felt a little better. Less like a bag full of medical waste, more like his anatomy was stuck together right, although he wouldn't say no to a few weeks of R and R. "It's not Hell."

"No," Sam said.

"So, it's Earth. Somewhere." He lifted his hands, let them fall back to his sides. "Some… when."

Dean hiked up to stand beside Sam. They looked out over golden sand. Cradled in the palm of the desert was a green oasis. The part of Dean that was Michael knew where he was. Exactly where he most wanted to be. Back at the beginning.

Dean put his hands on his hips. "This is gonna be interesting."

Sam laughed. They walked down the gentle slope of sand toward the Garden, together.

***


End file.
